by Ann Granger
‘I bring my own tea because theirs – in that tin over there – is horrid, cheap stuff full of dust. There’s no fresh milk, do you mind? The fridge here doesn’t work. It’s not a proper public library now, you see. It was. But now it’s kept open by volunteers, and there’s no money to replace the fridge. The biscuits are OK. Someone brought them in today.’
‘Do you live here in Weston St Ambrose?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I can afford the rent on a small place here. The down side is that it means I have to travel some distance to work, so I have to run a car. Just around Weston, of course, I use my bike. Saves money. But I can’t bike it to Stow, for example, and back.’
Tom, recalling the bicycle chained up in the car park at Crooked Man Woods, said, ‘I think I saw your bike. I didn’t see you in the woods, though.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a good day for me, too much distraction.’ She paused. ‘I wanted a subject interesting enough to go in this exhibition. I got there early because I hoped there wouldn’t be anyone around. People have a knack of walking into shot.’ She hesitated. ‘Normally, I’m not nervous about being out on my own in the woods, but there was something really spooky about them that morning. I wasn’t alone. I’m sure of it. Someone – or something – else was there. Well, now you tell me you were there, but this was – different.’
‘How different?’
‘That’s it, you see. I could hear things but not see them.’
‘Muntjak deer sometimes find their way into the woods,’ Tom suggested.
Sally shook her head. ‘I know the barking noises they make. But it wasn’t deer. The sounds I heard were part human and part not. There was a panting and a muffled groaning. At one point it stopped, but then began again. Honestly, it really freaked me out. There was something despairing about it. You can bet I kept away from that spot. But I couldn’t rid myself of the creepy feeling I had. I’d heard a vehicle just before. Visitors have to use the car park, but there is another way into the woods, from the further side.’
‘I know it,’ Tom said. ‘It’s a track used by forestry workers.’
‘That’s the one. The vehicle I heard must have taken that. I decided it was someone clearing rubbish. Anyway, then I heard it leave. I tried to concentrate after that, but I couldn’t. I was looking over my shoulder every two minutes. After about another twenty minutes I decided to call it a day. I went back to the visitors’ car park and there was a silver SUV there.’
‘That was mine,’ Tom told her.
‘Oh? I didn’t see you.’
‘I went down the red path and then turned off on to the blue one. That’s where I found – him.’
‘I don’t stick to the paths. I prowl about in the woods. I’m glad I didn’t find the body! That would have been worse than my hearing things. Anyway, I cycled off home.’
‘Did you, at any time, see a black Range Rover?’
‘No.’ She sounded quite decided.
‘Listen,’ Tom said urgently. ‘You must tell the police all this. They’ve been looking for the owner of the bicycle. They’re desperate for witnesses. You need to talk to Inspector Jessica Campbell. If you don’t mind, I’ll tell her about you. Where can she find you?’
‘I’m a dental hygienist and I work out of different surgeries in the area on different days. Tomorrow I’ll be in Stow on the Wold.’ She scrabbled in her pocket and extracted a small notebook. ‘This is the dental surgery’s address in Stow. Of course, I’ll be here at the library for the next hour or two. My name is Sally Grove,’ she added belatedly.
It was confession time. Tom said: ‘My name is Tom Palmer, and I’m a doctor. But I don’t deal with live patients.’ She looked understandably surprised but also curious. This was it. He had to tell her. ‘I conduct post mortems.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘then you’ll be used to bodies. Finding one in the woods must have been a shock but, well, you will have seen nasty sights in the course of your work.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
‘So have I!’ she said with feeling. ‘Looking into some people’s mouths can really put you off your dinner.’
‘Sally?’ called a voice from the main room. ‘Anyone seen Sally? She was here just now. Where’s she gone?’
‘I must go,’ said Sally, ‘or they’ll take my work down and Gordon will put his up instead. He’s after that spot, I know he is. Nice to meet you, Tom.’
‘Likewise. You won’t forget what I said about telling the police what you heard in the woods that morning?’
‘I won’t forget. Inspector Campbell, right?’ She had now disappeared from sight. ‘Oh, Gordon,’ her voice drifted back, exasperation in it, ‘you’ve moved all my exhibits!’
Though he had denied it to Jess, Tom had been rather embarrassed at forgetting to tell her at the scene about the woman driver who had nearly forced him off the road. Now he had a chance to make amends. Not only that, but he’d stolen a march on the professionals. He’d found the missing cyclist. He tried to phone Jess as he walked back to the car park. But he couldn’t get through. He had to send a text message. ‘Found missing cyclist. Sally Grove. Call me.’
But she didn’t call him back until very late, just after ten that evening. Tom had watched the news headlines, found them all too depressing, switched off the television and, finding himself unexpectedly very tired, decided to go to bed. At that point, Jess rang. Briefly, he told her about Sally hearing odd sounds in the woods.
‘It gave her the heebie-jeebies and I got the impression she’s a pretty level-headed person.’
‘But she didn’t see anyone?’
‘True. But I don’t think she’s the sort of person to imagine things.’
Jess was still sounding doubtful. ‘Trees rustle and creak. As for the panting sound, it could have been the wind blowing through something. But I’ll drive over to Stow on the Wold and seek her out tomorrow. Thanks, Tom.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ returned Tom magnanimously. ‘Oh, I had lunch at the Royal Oak, and so did Mrs Briggs and Harriet whatsit – Kingsley. Old chums, obviously.’
‘Yes, they are, school buddies.’
‘Oh,’ said Tom, disappointed at not being the first with that bit of news. ‘Maurice Melton was lunching there, too. He joined me and talked shop throughout.’
‘It all seems to happen wherever you are, Tom!’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll be glad to get back to work for some peace and quiet.’
That was another good thing about corpses. They didn’t insist on making conversation.
The library closed at five because the volunteers all had to get home. The club still hadn’t decided on how best to display the selected work and everyone had got irritable. As you’d expect! thought Sally. She, personally, just wanted to leave without further delay. Gordon would fuss and argue all evening if he was allowed. It was already getting dark and she had to cycle to her rented cottage, about a mile outside Weston St Ambrose. It wasn’t an isolated house, it was in a row of former farmworkers’ cottages, and there were a couple of bigger houses nearby down lanes off the main road, but it was a lonely ride and there was little daylight left.
Everyone else, of course, wanted to socialise, to go for a cup of tea in Weston’s one and only tearoom, or an early drink (what Gordon Ferris called ‘a pre-prandial’) at the Black Horse pub.
‘Not the Royal Oak,’ opined Gordon. ‘The drinks are too expensive in the bar there. Tourist trap.’
Debbie and Sally were both for squeezing into the tearoom. But the men were all against that because of the lack of space and the fact that the two elderly women who ran the place didn’t like people sitting around chatting if they weren’t buying cake or sandwiches.
‘They hover,’ said Ron. ‘And if you raise your voice above a whisper they glare and say, “Shush!”’
‘They’ll be closing now, anyway,’ put in Debbie. ‘They shut at five-thirty on the dot.’
So they all went to the Black Horse, which was the sort
of pub Weston’s rougher element drank in. Sally hated it, because it was dark and smelled of beer, and if you needed to go to the ladies’, you had to go outside to an alley and into a separate little hut that had once been a stable, and there was no heating. Also, despite whitewashed walls and air freshener, there was a lingering odour of horse. She would really have liked to refuse altogether to join them, protesting rightly that she had a bike ride home. But that might be construed as some kind of criticism of the way things had gone back at the library. So she trailed along with Debbie, who said, ‘I’m glad you’re coming, too, Sally. I don’t want to be stuck in the Black Horse with a bunch of men.’ Sally managed not to reply I just don’t want to be stuck in any pub. I want to go home.
The men all settled into the public bar quite happily. After about twenty minutes, Sally started looking surreptitiously at her watch. But they were all chattering away and Ron had bought her a packet of crisps.
At last, Debbie said, ‘This is great fun, but I really need to get the supper started, Mike. We’ve got pork chops!’
Mike, who was one of those people who manage to put away regular large meals and remain as lean as a whippet, drained his glass and stood to bid the company goodnight.
‘My wife’s gone to her mother’s,’ said Desmond, ‘so I might as well stay here for a while. She’ll have left me something cold I’m supposed to put in the microwave.’
‘I’ll probably have a pizza here,’ said Ron mournfully.
They understood his lack of enthusiasm, because the cooked-from-frozen pizzas served up at the pub weren’t the stuff of gourmet dining.
So Debbie and Mike departed in an aura of domestic togetherness, and Sally took the opportunity to scurry out as well, before Ron invited her to join him for a pizza.
‘They’re well settled in,’ said Mike, outside in the street.
‘They’ve got no one to go home to,’ replied Debbie, squeezing his arm and gazing up at him.
Oh, give it a miss! thought Sally. Aloud, she said robustly, ‘Neither have I! But I don’t sit about in pubs. Anyway, I’ve got to drive over to Stow on the Wold tomorrow to work.’
The Wilsons’ home was within walking distance, and they set off linked, thought Sally unkindly, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Sally rescued her bicycle from the yard at the back of the pub to which she’d had to move it after the library closed. She was relieved to find it still there. It was an old bike and nobody should want it. But the Black Horse attracted a number of Weston St Ambrose’s younger population, and they were generally out to make any mischief offered to them.
She pedalled off at a good pace and soon left the last buildings behind. This was the loneliest stretch, a four-minute (she’d timed it) ride to the cottages; not far, but far enough. There was no illumination other than the moon and her bicycle light. The moon’s contribution was fitful, clouds scudding across it. The hedgerows to either side rustled, and the trees creaked. It reminded her of when she’d been in Crooked Man Woods that morning and heard all those creepy noises. That chap in the library, Tom, had told her to contact the police about it. It was the morning the dead man had been found. Tom had been in the woods and found the body. Tom himself seemed like a really nice person. It was too late to phone the police tonight, and tomorrow she’d have no time before leaving to drive to Stow on the Wold. But at lunchtime she would definitely follow Tom’s advice and contact someone – Inspector Campbell, as he’d advised. Yes, she’d do that.
Out of the darkness a sudden beam of bright light played across her and she heard the sound of a motor vehicle approaching from behind, coming from Weston. The road wasn’t very wide here, but wide enough for the driver to overtake her. But she made sure, riding in as close to the verge as she could. She wore a reflective jacket. He’d see her. He’d slow down soon. But he didn’t. He seemed to have speeded up and now he was right behind her. A spurt of alarm sent a painful tremor through her chest. She couldn’t pull off the road because there was a deep drainage ditch. He must have seen her.
Nearer and nearer. She took her right hand from the handlebar and turned in the saddle to gesticulate wildly at the windscreen creeping up on her. She couldn’t distinguish the driver but it was then that the sick realisation flooded over her that not only could the driver see her, he was deliberately targeting her.
A split second before the impact Sally threw herself sideways. The bike slid away from her beneath the wheels of the oncoming vehicle. She hit the road head first. Her helmet took the first shock but she felt a stab of pain. Nevertheless, she managed to roll over in an ungainly, scrabbling way. The ground beneath her gave way and she was plunging down, down, into a wet, cold, watery trap. I’m in the ditch, she thought, before she lost consciousness.
Chapter 11
‘It’ll prove a wild-goose chase!’ warned Ian Carter the following morning. ‘You’ll go all the way to Stow on the Wold just to find that this young woman was frightened by a combination of birdlife in the branches and her own imagination.’
‘She seems to have impressed Tom as being sensible.’
‘She seems to have impressed Tom, full stop!’ muttered Carter.
‘And we now know the identity of the missing cyclist.’
‘Perhaps we ought to take Dr Palmer on to the force! He seems disinclined to attend to his duties at the morgue.’
‘He’s on sick leave!’ Jess protested.
‘So you keep telling me! It gives him plenty of time, apparently, for finding bodies, chatty lunches at the Royal Oak with Maurice Melton and amateur detective work. When’s he going back to work?’
‘Next week, I think,’ said Jess.
‘Thank goodness!’ growled Carter.
He’s certainly in a bad mood this morning, thought Jess. What’s brought that on? I wonder. It can’t all be to do with Tom. Aloud, she asked carelessly, ‘Millie still OK at school?’
‘What? Oh, yes, thanks, she’s fine.’ Carter paused. ‘Her mother rang last night. She and Rodney didn’t sell their house here when they moved to France. It’s rented out. But now there’s a problem with the tenant, so Sophie is coming over to sort it out. She wants me to meet her for lunch somewhere and, as she puts it, “touch base”.’
Ah! thought Jess. So that’s the problem! Sophie will be back in the UK and on the prowl, and if she’s suggesting Ian and she meet up it could mean because of a problem with Millie. But Ian says Millie’s fine. So it’s some other problem. ‘That’ll be nice,’ she said cheerfully.
Carter looked up at her, his face a picture. Forcing back what he obviously felt like saying, he merely advised: ‘Oughtn’t you to get going, if you’re driving over to Stow on the Wold? No need to take all day about it, is there?’
When Jess had left, Carter immediately regretted having spoken so sharply. Being riled by Sophie didn’t excuse discourtesy to a colleague, especially one whom he not only respected but also, well, liked very much. He shouldn’t have been so rude about Tom Palmer, either. He was also aware that he’d only told Jess half the story with regard to Sophie’s visit. His ex-wife was not just popping over from France to check out the rented-out property, which was well out of this area. She was going to be much nearer. She was proposing to stay for a few days with her aunt, Monica Farrell, who lived in Weston St Ambrose. ‘Monica is getting on,’ Sophie said. ‘I’d like to see how she is.’
Ian liked Monica, who was a retired primary-school headmistress, and he’d always got on well with her. She’d also helped out in the past, looking after Millie when his daughter was staying with him and Carter had to work. He felt guilty that he’d not paid a courtesy call on Miss Farrell for some time. It made him look like someone who turned up only when he needed something. He would try and drop by Monica’s cottage before Sophie arrived. For the next half an hour, he shuffled paperwork about, wishing something would happen to distract him from his own nagging guilt. Then it did.
A nerve-jangling squeak was growing louder, meaning someone was coming along th
e corridor towards his office. Could no one do anything about that floor? It struck him that the footsteps were rapid, and that could mean something had happened. A knock at the door announced a breathless Tracy Bennison.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you’d want to know. Someone called Derek Davies has just phoned in from the Old Nunnery. He says he’s a carpenter working there. Two people, a man and a woman, have turned up. He says they are making trouble for Mrs Kingsley. He thinks it’s to do with her stepbrother. Captain Kingsley isn’t there. Mrs Kingsley has asked the visitors to leave and they refused. So Mrs Kingsley asked Davies to phone Inspector Campbell, but she’s left.’
‘I’ll go!’ said Carter immediately, starting up from his chair and reaching for his jacket. ‘Is Phil Morton in the building? Tell him I need him, asap.’
Derek Davies, a squat, grizzled figure in work gear, was awaiting their arrival at the entrance gates of the Old Nunnery. He signalled wildly to their car to stop. ‘You the police?’ he was shouting.
‘What’s up?’ demanded Morton, the driver, opening the door and leaning out.
‘She can’t make ’em leave, and I can’t, either!’ declared Davies, crouching down and putting one hand on the top of the car. ‘And he’s gone to Gloucester about something or other, so there’s no use me phoning him. That’s why I phoned you lot.’
‘Who are they?’ called Carter from the passenger seat.
‘Blessed if I know! Man and a woman – townies. The woman is doing most of the talking – shouting, more like it. It’s all about Mrs Kingsley’s brother, the one what got shot over in Crooked Man Woods.’